When we get beyond beauty and pleasure,
to the other side of the heart (but short
of the spirit), we are confused about what
to do next. It is too easy to say arriving
is enough. To pretend the music
of the mountain needs only to be heard.
That the dance is known by the dancing,
and the lasagne is realized by eating it.
Not in this place on the other side
of desire. We can swim in the Aegean,
but we can't take it home. A man finds
a melon by the road and continues up
the hill thinking it is the warm melon
that will remain after he has forgotten
the ruins and sea of the summer. He tells
himself this even as the idea of the taste
is replacing what the melon tasted like.
The Dance Most of All
Alfred A. Knopf
from Poetry Daily
Houses read marvelously, spurned lovers, probability clouds,
and a field left to itself.
The book is closed, the windows.
On the glass starkly, someone's misted breath lifts,
and lifts, and lifts until I'm reminded of economy of expression.
And there slips in a thin wire
of sunlight, transient as a knock
on the door. Again, there is no one
there. The evening is gathering, asking,
how was your day?
Fine,
thank,
it is you.
emong, ramblingsoul, kuwabatake
